How to Color: Using Basic Stippling in Your Backgrounds

It's Tutorial Tuesday!

This week we're going to color this sweet witch and her adorable kitty and talk a smidge about the difference between the drawing techniques of stippling (which we will use a teeny tiny bit in this tutorial) and pointillism since people sometimes get these 'dotting' techniques confused.

Stippling vs. Pointillism:

I'm going to share with you the best explanation I could find. With credit of course!From Claydon Fine Arts:

"stip·ple (stpl)tr.v. stip·pled, stip·pling, stip·ples1. To draw, engrave, or paint in dots or short strokes.2. To apply (paint, for example) in dots or short strokes.3. To dot, fleck, or speckle: “They crossed a field stippled with purple weeds” (Flannery O’Connor).n.1. A method of drawing, engraving, or painting using dots or short strokes".

The making of a pattern simulating different degrees of solidity or shading by using small dots. Such a pattern may occur in nature and it is frequently emulated by artists such as Todd Claydon.

In a stippled drawing or painting, the dots are made of a single colour and applied with a pen or brush; the denser the dots, the darker the apparent shade—or lighter, if the ink is lighter than the surface. This is different from pointillism. It uses dots of many colours to simulate blended colours. In printmaking, dots may be etched out of a surface to which ink will be applied, to produce either more or less density of ink depending on the technique. In engraving, this style was invented by Giulio Campagnola in around 1510. This technique is also used in engraving or sculpting an object even when there is no ink or paint involved, either to change the texture of the object, or to produce the appearance of light or dark shading depending on the reflective properties of the surface: for example, engraving dots on glass produces areas that appear brighter than the surrounding glass.

If you look at the artwork of Todd Claydon, you'll see stippling is quite amazing, and can get really complex. For our purposes today, we are keeping it simple. However, don't be afraid to play with stippling in more of your coloring. You can use it to create shapes - spirals coming out from behind your characters, or hearts fading into the background. You can also use it just like Todd Claydon does - to shade your entire piece. Play, experiment, step out of your comfort zone - that's how we grow =) Now, onto the tutorial...

Grab The Witch and Her Kitty to color yourself here:

Keep in mind...

You don't have to use Copics to follow along. Just use your color chart to match what you have to my colors below. Then create your own palette from that, labeling your colors with the Copic codes below so you can follow along with the video. Easy peasy =)

Feel free to pin the image below to your Pinterest board so you can come back to the tutorial later :)